He's not going to win the Democratic nomination. He'll give Hillary Clinton a run for her money, but unless something huge happens (like Clinton getting indicted for her e-mail server scandal), he's probably already maxed out his voter base, which is predominantly young, white, disaffected males and über-left-leaning states.
I have some knowledge about the dude since I grew up in Vermont, which is the state Bernie represents as a senator.
I have some built-in issues with him that are more personal than political, but I think they're kind of telling. After the (communist) Sandinistas took over in Nicaragua in 1979, Bernie was elected mayor of Burlington, Vermont's largest city, and he went to Nicaragua and publicly endorsed the government. My father came to the U.S. as a political refugee fleeing the Sandinistas, who were marginally better than the previous dictatorship but plenty shitty in their own way, and he saw it as absolutely insane that this guy was claiming the government was doing all sorts of great things when it was torturing and jailing people for speaking out just like the dictatorship they had toppled. If you lack the intellectual honesty to say, "The U.S. supported a dictatorship, but the Sandinistas are also shitty," you're a turd. Bernie has never apologized or recanted on that count.
That being said, I agree with him on getting money out of politics and raising the minimum wage. But many of his economic views- like de-normalizing trade relations with China- are totally fucking insane. More broadly, his solution to EVERYTHING is not "let's see how we can make markets work better and help people," but "let's soak the rich, tax the fuck out of them, and use it to pay for government to do everything." Economic policy shouldn't be an instrument of punishment against the wealthy, and when you talk about doubling and tripling marginal tax rates, that's basically what you're doing. He's a classic populist, and he's proposing ludicrous things that sound great but ultimately aren't going to happen and ought not to in many cases.
edit: additionally, it's also fun that a lot of Bernie supporters believe he's somehow above politics. But he's one of the most pro-gun senators in the chamber because Vermont remains a pro-gun state. It's not as if Bernie is some sort of messiah for freedom and justice- he's a far left senator from a far left state proposing typical far left policies, nothing more and nothing less. Same as how Elizabeth Warren hates on Wall Street but is happy to give tax incentives to defense contractors in her state because they provide jobs and campaign contributions.
double edit: and he got elected as senator solely because the NRA backed him over a moderate, pro-gun-control Republican.
much appreciated. I can't quite tell if this is a time where there could be some big change in the U.S., or on the flip side, a chance for more of the same (depending on candidate). 
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